Sounds like my Latitude e6220 - running TLP and thermald will help with the overheating. It's a great little machine, unfortunately the screen lets it down.

What is TLP? I have Windows on it at the moment as I used to play counter-strike on it, and honestly it doesn't matter to me which OS I use at the moment. I prefer Linux, but haven't put in the work to switch everything over since I need to do work on it, so no thermald for me.

Agree it's a pretty solid machine. Bought it for $10 secondhand in 2016 and it's still going strong.

Probably this [1], software for optimizing Linux power usage.

[1]: https://linrunner.de/tlp/index.html

Yes, that's it.

you can use yt-dlp and mpv to watch youtube vids. Still need to find the URL yourself but you don't need their website to watch it.

Oh yeah I often do. Depends how youtube is acting in my browser at the time, which tends to depend on how many other tabs I have open.

But yeah I often just open a terminal and download the video.

Sometimes a half-solution will do, like Invidious or Piped.

[0] https://invidious.io/

[1] https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped

Interesting links, thank you. I think I may have them in a text file somewhere, planning on setting them up eventually, as well as other services like various decentralized search instances and such, but I just never got around to them.

I've installed the extension to redirect videos to a piped instance and that looks like it's going to work pretty well, so thanks!

Clean it?

It's not that. I've taken it apart numerous times and cleaned out any dust I see. There's no clogging or anything going on.

Maybe it needs more thermal paste, but honestly whenever I've tried that in the past on older laptops it made no difference.

Not sure what else it could be. Besides, it still works fine, just hear the fan whirring up pretty often.

What CPU is it?

My suggestions: Have you checked with Throttlestop if it's being throttled for any reason? Have you tried setting your power option to performance or checking the energy options for the cooling strategy and max clockspeed allowed?

Based on what you've written, I think it's very likely that the heat pipes (if any) need to be replaced since the coolant inside has probably evaporated and escaped. As it's a Dell, replacement parts should be easy to get.

It's a core i5.

I think I set some option in the bios to limit CPU usage/speed for battery life or something hoping it would run cooler, but whatever I changed never made a difference and it's been a long time since I've looked in the bios.

I hadn't heard of throttlestop, just grabbed it to run. So CPU is specifically a Core i5-2540m

The 4 cores are all between 66c and 68c alternating, and it says max is between 76c and 78c.

'Disable turbo' is shown as checked, so is 'BD PROCHOT', SpeedStep and 'C1E'. 'High Performance' is not checked.

When you say heat pipes, would that be referring to the copper colored metal over the CPU and GPU, what I had been calling the heatsink? I had not realized they had coolant in them at all. I've never replaced that, but I'm comfortable enough changing CPUs and such so I'm not worried about doing so.

If that's what I have to replace I may look on ebay and do so, would indeed be nice to have it running less hot, and also get rid of my probably irrational fear that the heat might make the battery explode.

I had no idea either until fairly recently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pipe I repaired a laptop where replacing the paste didn't help, but replacing the pipes (or rather the heatsink assembly, which they're a part of) did wonders.

If you're already comfortable with taking it apart, it's trivial to replace. I think it's your best bet. You might even be able to get it directly from Dell since they also sell replacement parts.

I may look at doing so, thanks for the tip! TIL!

For such an old laptop I'm not sure if I want to keep spending money on it, $15 to upgrade the ram, $10 for a new keyboard after I broke keys from taking them off to clean them, $25 for a new battery etc.

Even though it runs very hot it does seem to work ok, and I'm hoping to just buy a brand new $100 or so machine hopefully in the first quarter of next year, but we will see. I still may end up doing so though.

I think I would have to try and buy from Dell directly, as on ebay all the heat sinks were preowned, and may be no better than the one I already have.

> heat pipes (if any) need to be replaced since the coolant inside has probably evaporated and escaped. As it's a Dell, replacement parts should be easy to get.

Was my initial guess as well, though it's hardly worth replacing unless wanting to keep it for sentimental reasons